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My two cents: The United States has an extremely diverse history, with a lot of bright times and dark times.
Regarding history, it is best to remember it, and learn from it, and most importantly do not let the dark times repeat, and learn from out mistakes.
But An "apology" for Penn founders having owned slaves? That sounds so nonsensical to me.
U of Penn today is hardly responsible for its founders actions.
There is nothing you can do besides acknowledging what was common practice then. No one alive today owned slaves and no one alive today was a slave, and that has been the case for many many years.
Many ethnic backgrounds and civilizations had slavery at a point in time, so what is there to take action on?
Does anyone feel that this apologist movement has gone a little too far? Or am I missing the point?
Also, I am not at all advocating for any negative actions, and of course I ashamed at some of the atrocities that have happened in this country throughout the years.
My question on this topic is whether an "apology" or "action" is needed from Penn and other institutions for events of the far past.
My two cents: The United States has an extremely diverse history, with a lot of bright times and dark times.
Regarding history, it is best to remember it, and learn from it, and most importantly do not let the dark times repeat, and learn from out mistakes.
But An "apology" for Penn founders having owned slaves? That sounds so nonsensical to me.
U of Penn today is hardly responsible for its founders actions.
There is nothing you can do besides acknowledging what was common practice then. No one alive today owned slaves and no one alive today was a slave, and that has been the case for many many years.
Many ethnic backgrounds and civilizations had slavery at a point in time, so what is there to take action on?
Does anyone feel that this apologist movement has gone a little too far? Or am I missing the point?
Also, I am not at all advocating for any negative actions, and of course I ashamed at some of the atrocities that have happened in this country throughout the years.
My question on this topic is whether an "apology" or "action" is needed from Penn and other institutions for events of the far past.
It's not as long ago, or as "far past", as you think. There are still people alive now who met former slaves.
In 1964, I met the oldest person in my big extended family, at the time, who was born, in 1862, into slavery in Virginia. She was 102. I was 14 nearly 15.
No, I don't think the apologist movement, regarding this, has gone too far considering that, previously,there was zero effort to even acknowledge these facts officially.
My two cents: The United States has an extremely diverse history, with a lot of bright times and dark times.
Regarding history, it is best to remember it, and learn from it, and most importantly do not let the dark times repeat, and learn from out mistakes.
But An "apology" for Penn founders having owned slaves? That sounds so nonsensical to me.
U of Penn today is hardly responsible for its founders actions.
There is nothing you can do besides acknowledging what was common practice then. No one alive today owned slaves and no one alive today was a slave, and that has been the case for many many years.
Many ethnic backgrounds and civilizations had slavery at a point in time, so what is there to take action on?
Does anyone feel that this apologist movement has gone a little too far? Or am I missing the point?
Also, I am not at all advocating for any negative actions, and of course I ashamed at some of the atrocities that have happened in this country throughout the years.
My question on this topic is whether an "apology" or "action" is needed from Penn and other institutions for events of the far past.
Given what I see going on around me now, maybe not from Penn, but someone should be.
Slavery goes on now elsewhere, true, and it has been part of society for millennia, but even then, there were people who saw in it a clear wrong.
There is a historical marker here in Germantown that demonstrates that. The historic marker stands at the site of this:
By the time this country declared independence in a document that proclaimed "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal" and might have included a clause blaming the King of England for "causing us to traffick in Men," an acknowledgement of a certain hypocrisy we would not end for another 80-plus years and whose aftereffects continue in our own time, their fellow Quakers had become completely convinced of the moral wrongness of slavery and acted accordingly.
As the Wikipedia article states, some of the signers of that petition, unhappy with the conflicted position their fellow Quakers held on slavery, went on to found the Mennonite church, whose first meeting house also lies in the old German Township, in what's now Mt. Airy.
That 1688 petition can be said to be the first declaration of universal human rights, and its arguments had spread widely enough that the drafter of the Declaration of Independence had at least absorbed some of them. (This is also clear from a reading of his Notes on the State of Virginia, where the internal contradiction is made plain.)
A central tenet of Christian doctrine is that we must all confess our sins. It matters not when they were committed. We do so, we receive God's assurance of pardon, and we go on with our lives.
The part that's unspoken but acknowledged elsewhere in Christian doctrine is that we will also go on sinning - it's our nature. So we will be continually confessing the wrongs we have done. And they may be the same wrongs - a point lost on the Judgementalists, for whom Christ reserved his harshest judgement, by the way. What you are witnessing here is a form of this particularly and perhaps peculiarly Christian impulse. And given all the things we have learned about our past that others sought to bury (and often succeeded in doing so), maybe it's a more appropriate gesture than you think.
Does anyone feel that this apologist movement has gone a little too far? Or am I missing the point?
Also, I am not at all advocating for any negative actions, and of course I ashamed at some of the atrocities that have happened in this country throughout the years.
My question on this topic is whether an "apology" or "action" is needed from Penn and other institutions for events of the far past.
It’s often dangerous to assume, but I’m pretty sure you are a young white man. I’m also white. People like us used to own black people and have never apologized. It’s hard for us to imagine what that might be like. It seems like it’s long past time for apologies. I can imagine that resisting to do so would only create more pain.
Thanks for all the replies! Glad I got to hear some points I didn't really consider.
I enjoy seeing the perspectives from you guys, since we all come from different backgrounds.
My two cents: The United States has an extremely diverse history, with a lot of bright times and dark times.
Regarding history, it is best to remember it, and learn from it, and most importantly do not let the dark times repeat, and learn from out mistakes.
But An "apology" for Penn founders having owned slaves? That sounds so nonsensical to me.
U of Penn today is hardly responsible for its founders actions.
There is nothing you can do besides acknowledging what was common practice then. No one alive today owned slaves and no one alive today was a slave, and that has been the case for many many years.
Many ethnic backgrounds and civilizations had slavery at a point in time, so what is there to take action on?
Does anyone feel that this apologist movement has gone a little too far? Or am I missing the point?
Also, I am not at all advocating for any negative actions, and of course I ashamed at some of the atrocities that have happened in this country throughout the years.
My question on this topic is whether an "apology" or "action" is needed from Penn and other institutions for events of the far past.
Reflection and self-evaluation is useful in order to identify action that is needed to take. But there has to be an honest reason to do so in order to make quality change. What Penn is doing, like many other big businesses, is trying to safeguard their brand. The reason is not honest, nor will it drive any kind of useful action. It's disingenuous, racially inflammatory and more of the same from greedy executives at the top. It's also the type of action that removes the meaning from real racial issues.
The more this weak society fails to focus and talk about real issues, continuing to play fiddle to the new marketing strategies around race, the more we will become racially strained. I, for one, am so sick of it that I don't want to hear ANY of it. None. And UPenn, as a result, is just another lying enterprise sweeping whatever real issues it still has under the carpet using this as a distraction. Shame on them and shame on our politicians and business "leaders" for leading us down this path for the sake of money and enterprise. And shame on our public for accepting the dialog.
The part that's unspoken but acknowledged elsewhere in Christian doctrine is that we will also go on sinning - it's our nature. So we will be continually confessing the wrongs we have done. And they may be the same wrongs - a point lost on the Judgementalists, for whom Christ reserved his harshest judgement, by the way. What you are witnessing here is a form of this particularly and perhaps peculiarly Christian impulse. And given all the things we have learned about our past that others sought to bury (and often succeeded in doing so), maybe it's a more appropriate gesture than you think.
This is great. Go to church and confess your sins so that one may make room for more sins in the coming week. We have to accept we're not perfect, and while that should have firm boundaries that most of us could probably agree on, it can't possibly mean that we take responsibility for things that have happened 150 years ago. I take full responsibility for my actions, and I confess to where I'm imperfect, and therefore, I make the best change I'm able. But, I won't be a disingenuous false apologist. Our corporations have departments around how to be strategically anti-racist. It's racist in concept IMO.
Reflection and self-evaluation is useful in order to identify action that is needed to take. But there has to be an honest reason to do so in order to make quality change. What Penn is doing, like many other big businesses, is trying to safeguard their brand. The reason is not honest, nor will it drive any kind of useful action. It's disingenuous, racially inflammatory and more of the same from greedy executives at the top. It's also the type of action that removes the meaning from real racial issues.
The more this weak society fails to focus and talk about real issues, continuing to play fiddle to the new marketing strategies around race, the more we will become racially strained. I, for one, am so sick of it that I don't want to hear ANY of it. None. And UPenn, as a result, is just another lying enterprise sweeping whatever real issues it still has under the carpet using this as a distraction. Shame on them and shame on our politicians and business "leaders" for leading us down this path for the sake of money and enterprise. And shame on our public for accepting the dialog.
I don't look at this so cynically. As a very large, prominent institution like Penn, of course there's a PR angle here. But I think there's some value in trying to introduce the idea or feeling of coming to terms with our society's deep flaws throughout history. It's how we derive our concept of "progress."
It's not necessarily about assigning blame (although I understand the optics of an "apology" seem to suggest otherwise), nor is intended to force the offspring of society's privileged to feel culpable for the actions of their ancestors.
It's simply recognizing that, using our modern lens, we should denounce what happened at certain points in our history, that it doesn't define us today, and that we should try our damnedest so that we don't ever go down a similar path again.
Is this only a symbolic gesture without any tangible consequence? Of course. But symbolic gestures, as trite and sometimes disingenuous as they seem, still do matter to people, because at the very least, they're meant to drive us to a place of common ground. That, in turn, enables real progress.
I don't look at this so cynically. As a very large, prominent institution like Penn, of course there's a PR angle here. But I think there's some value in trying to introduce the idea or feeling of coming to terms with our society's deep flaws throughout history. It's how we derive our concept of "progress."
It's not necessarily about assigning blame (although I understand the optics of an "apology" seem to suggest otherwise), nor is intended to force the offspring of society's privileged to feel culpable for the actions of their ancestors.
It's simply recognizing that, using our modern lens, we should denounce what happened at certain points in our history, that it doesn't define us today, and that we should try our damnedest so that we don't ever go down a similar path again.
Is this only a symbolic gesture without any tangible consequence? Of course. But symbolic gestures, as trite and sometimes disingenuous as they seem, still do matter to people, because at the very least, they're meant to drive us to a place of common ground. That, in turn, enables real progress.
This gesture and my reaction to it is in context of today since it just happened. And today, the times are riddled with PR apologies that mean very little. Is that cynicism? Is what's going on in Philadelphia (and nation) really a healing? Apologies are made to resolve emotional impact or attachment from an occurrence and seek to make change. Are of these apologies really coming from empathy with real purpose? Maybe, maybe not.
A genuine approach would be to launch a learning, video, show, exhibit, etc. about the history of Penn in this regard. An understanding of the times, what actually happened, how it has impacted the institution today.
But then again, apologizing for extreme actions that are 150 years old while we as a society continue to violate similar boundaries today seems disingenuous to me. Our business leaders move jobs out of the country to cut costs and our people go into poverty (socio-economics enhance the effect for some). Our big universities continue to sell their degrees without real guidance to how they can or will/will not be used once you're paying these monster loans back (empty product). UPenn continues to build its museums with artifacts from around the world, taken from those in African countries, stealing them from the poor. My point simply being that it would be disingenuous for me to pile onto the empty apology-giving while there is plenty of wrongdoing today that happens to be a byproduct of business as usual.
It's simply recognizing that, using our modern lens, we should denounce what happened at certain points in our history, that it doesn't define us today, and that we should try our damnedest so that we don't ever go down a similar path again.
Is this only a symbolic gesture without any tangible consequence? Of course. But symbolic gestures, as trite and sometimes disingenuous as they seem, still do matter to people, because at the very least, they're meant to drive us to a place of common ground. That, in turn, enables real progress.
(emphasis added)
And haven't any of you out there noticed parallels to the ugly past occurring right now?
History moves not in a line but in an oscillating pattern, like the wheels of a locomotive going down a track. Sometimes, the oscillations are retrograde, as they were after Reconstruction ended and again in the Depression years. I see plenty of evidence that we are in one of those retrograde cycles now.
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